Ed Conway Profile picture
Feb 21, 2024 17 tweets 6 min read Read on X
🚨How British companies are bolstering Vladimir Putin’s war machine🚨
A depressing thread.
But an important one.
With some pretty shocking charts.
Let’s begin with the “official” picture. It suggests UK trade with Russia has collapsed since Feb 2022. Down by 74%… Image
Now let's fill in the data.
Look how we're no longer exporting cars or heavy machinery to Russia. Because the govt is well aware this stuff could be repurposed into weapons. So the official line is that this is a big success story.
Looks like Russia's economy is being starved Image
But clearly the Russian economy isn't doing as badly as all that. Indeed Russia is due to grow faster than any G7 nation this year 👇
And that's just the economy. Now look at the battlefield and Russia is looking v strong. No shortage of weapons/drones etc despite sanctions
Why? Image
Well let's imagine you're a Russian unit needing weapons. Imagine you rely on a certain input or tool from the UK. Back in the past you'd get it directly. But you can't anymore.
Here's one solution: set up a shell company in a friendly Caucasus state like Kyrgyzstan...
The genius of this is that there's no sanctions on these other neighbouring states. But once your goods arrive you can send them straight over to Russia.
They've been laundered.
Voila Russia gets its machinery which it can use to make weaponry etc, in spite of the sanctions. Image
Which raises a question: is this kind of thing actually happening? Well let's look at UK exports to Kyrgyzstan and ask the question: have they gone up since the outbreak of war? Well, have a look...
That's up by more than 1,100%.
And NB these aren't just ANY goods. They're precisely the machinery/car imports we can no longer send to Russia. All going to Kyrgyzstan. And then almost certainly onwards to Russia (tho the paper trail tends to end when goods leave UK) Image
It's a similar story in Armenia. And in many other Caucasus nations. A massive leap post invasion/sanctions... Image
Nor is this just a UK-specific story. Not in the slightest. If anything the volumes from Germany/Poland are worse.
@robin_j_brooks has been documenting this via EU figs for months. He's a must-follow for more on this extraordinarily under-reported story
And there's more (I'm afraid).
Because the issue isn't just the surge in volumes of trade to these caucasus nations, but precisely WHAT kinds of things we've been exporting to these countries.
So, I've looked at those numbers.
And what emerges is even more disturbing...
Starting point is to note the EU & G7 partners have a list of what they call "Common High Priority Items".
It's 45 categories of goods we KNOW the Russians are important and repurposing into weapons.
Because we've found them on the battlefield... finance.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2…
Which raises a question: are these items among the stuff Britain is sending to these states (which anyone with an ounce of sense must know are being diverted ro Russia)?
The answer is yes.
Very much yes 🫥
Here's the chart specifically looking at these items.
The items we KNOW are being used to kill Ukrainians. What you see here 👇 is trade flows specifically of these banned items to these states (who then almost certainly send them straight to Russia).
That's a 500%+ increase. Image
Now let's look at the specific line items we're talking about here.
These are the main "banned" goods UK companies re sending to four Russian neighbours👇
Top one: "Parts of aeroplanes, helicopters or unmanned aircraft".
In other words, parts you can use to make/repair drones... Image
Few things:
1. The absolute numbers 👆are not massive.
But add up figs across EU (viz @robin_j_brooks) & it's MUCH bigger. & then consider stuff going via Turkey/China.
2. Real story is TREND.
3. Sorry I described Kyrgyzstan as a caucasus nation 🤦‍♂️It's Central Asia. Whoops!
Anyway.
Here's my full story on this shocking phenomenon👇
On how UK companies seem to be sending millions of pounds worth of supposedly banned equipment to Russia via the shadow economy.
Equipment which we know has been used to kill Ukrainians... Ugh news.sky.com/story/british-…
Of course this is hardly the first time trade has trumped war. Consider the episode I wrote about in #MaterialWorld when Britain actually proposed buying binoculars off the Germans during WWI in exchange for rubber, so they could all carry on killing each other more efficiently…

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More from @EdConwaySky

Sep 2
📽️Is Britain REALLY facing a 1970s-style fiscal crisis?
Why are investors so freaked out about UK debt?
Is this REALLY worse than under Liz Truss?
Who's to blame? Rachel Reeves? The Bank of England?
And would a bit of productivity really solve everything?
📈 Your 6 min primer👇
OK, so let's break it down.
Start with the chart everyone (well, everyone in Whitehall) is talking about.
The 30yr UK government bond yield. Up to the highest level since 1998. And it's still rising.
Does this mean the UK is facing a fiscal crisis? Let's look at the evidence Image
First let's compare the UK to other G7 countries.
There's two ways to do this.
First, look at absolute levels👇
And it looks pretty awkward for the UK.
Pre-mini Budget we were middle of the pack. That changed post-Truss. And now, under Labour, the UK is even more of an outlier. Image
Read 18 tweets
Jul 29
EXCLUSIVE

👗Billions of pounds of imports...
↗️Rising by more than 50% a year...
🛬Planes stuffed with cheap clothes...
🇨🇳And a loophole saving Chinese companies from £billions of UK taxes.

Behind the scenes of one of the biggest stories in the modern economy: e-commerce
👇
We've spent months investigating this phenomenon.
- We've got the first official estimate of the scale of cheap untaxed imports into the UK.
- We've seen inside the planes carrying these goods here.
- A whole logistics industry is growing around it.
This is a v big deal! Image
The story begins with a MASSIVE rise in orders from Chinese e-commerce giants like SHEIN and Temu.
Now, most coverage of these brands focuses on labour standards. An important issue.
But there's something else going on here - something deeper.
A shift in how trade works... Image
Image
Image
Read 25 tweets
Jun 18
🧵Some thoughts re inflation.
Not the data today, but two deep issues we should prob spend more time thinking about.
1. While economists and policymakers may have convinced themselves that the cost of living squeeze is over, for millions of households, it doesn't feel that way.
The key thing to remember here is that when economists talk about inflation what they're really talking about is the ANNUAL RATE at which a basket of goods and services changes price. And certainly, that rate is much lower than the 2022 peaks... Image
But, as I say, what that number is is simply looking at the difference in the LEVEL of prices over the past year. This chart is that level. (The actual consumer price index!).
And yes, look over the year to May and it's up 3.4%. Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 12
🧵Why, barely 24 hours after the Spending Review, is everyone already going on about tax rises?
Are they REALLY coming?
Or is this an "incoherent argument", as one leading minister calls it?
Well here's a thread explaining what's really going on here.
Bear with me...
First things first.
Key thing to remember is that the main job of HMT is to generate enough money, mostly via taxes (left hand bar here), to finance all its spending (right hand bar).
If that left hand bar isn't high enough, we have to borrow to fill the gap.
That's the deficit! Image
This week's Spending Review was about the right hand column, obvs. But not ALL of the column.
Actually more than half of govt spending is on stuff that WASN'T covered by the spending review - on benefits, debt interest, pensions etc. It's called "annually managed expenditure"Image
Read 17 tweets
May 28
🧵
You may recall a spate of stories a few years ago about appalling working conditions & abysmally low pay in Leicester's clothes factories.
The hope was those stories would shame businesses into improving working conditions.
But here's what ACTUALLY happened next...
👇
Instead of staying in Leicester, most brands abandoned it & shifted production to N Africa & S Asia.
Today Britain's biggest centre of textile & apparel manufacture is battling the threat of extinction.
It's a mostly untold economic story we've spent recent months documenting Image
Once upon a time Leicester was the beating heart of UK clothes manufacturing.
The city was dotted with factories making clothes for big name brands.
Now, according to one estimate, the number of clothes factories has dropped from 1500 in 2017 to under 100 this year. A 95% fall. Image
Read 16 tweets
May 8
How big a deal is the new trade agreement unveiled between the US and the UK? Here are some initial thoughts.
Start with this: this is total UK exports to the US over the past 5yrs: £273bn. Right now most of this will face a 10% tariff. Some things (eg cars) face 25% extra Image
Let's break down that total. The biggest chunk is cars. Just under £30bn. That's covered under the agreement. So too are steel/aluminium exports. Much smaller at £2.7bn...
These sectors will benefit from special deals (though much of the detail still remains vague). Image
Image
Rolls Royce will apparently get tariff free access for its jet engines. That mostly helps Boeing, but also Rolls Royce. Jet engines comprise a surprisingly large chunk of UK exports to the US, about £17.3bn. So let's shade that red too... Image
Read 9 tweets

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